John Larroquette

Follow John Larroquette

John Larroquette

Date Of Birth

Biography

Award-winning actor and comedian John Larroquette was born on November 25, 1947 in New Orleans, Louisiana. He began acting in 1966, playing an uncredited role in the Disney live-action film Follow Me, Boys! He played numerous minor roles on television and film, and got his first big break as part of the short-lived medical drama Doctors’ Hospital. He also had a regular role in the war drama Baa Baa Black Sheep, and appeared in films such as Altered States, Hysterical and Heartbeat.

Larroquette became popular when he joined the comedy Night Court. Although he wasn’t the lead in the program—Harry Anderson was the sitcom’s key figure, as the inexperienced judge Harry Stone—it was Larroquette who became the show’s breakout character. He played Dan Fielding, a narcissistic, sex-obsessed prosecutor who did anything to get a woman to sleep with him. He won four consecutive Emmys for best Comedy Supporting Actor, a record at the time.

His next regular television project came in 1993, when he top-billed the sitcom The John Larroquette Show. He played John Hemingway, a recovering alcoholic who was put in charge of a bus depot’s late night shift. Initially containing more dark humor, the series was retooled in the second season due to network pressure, and lasted until its abrupt cancellation in 1996. A year later, he took a recurring role in The Practice, playing the wisecracking psychopath Joey Heric. This earned him another Emmy award in 1998, and a similar nomination in 2002.

More recently, Larroquette played the title role—a committed and tough lawyer—in the series of television movies, McBride. He then joined the cast of the legal drama Boston Legal, playing newly-transferred senior partner Carl Sack; notably, despite the continuity between this and its predecessor The Practice being connected, he plays a different character in the newer series.